‘AirRay’ car will run on sun and wind

Think you can’t run a car directly with sun and wind power generated by panels and wind turbines on the car itself?

EarthSure, a New Jersey-based renewable energy company, wants to you to re-think your thinking.

EarthSure is in the very early stages of developing a futuristic car called the AirRay™ which it claims will produce enough energy through solar power and wind power devices located on the car to power the entire car.

“This is the car that is destined to be the new ‘Car of the Future’,” states EarthSure in a press release describing the AirRay on its web site.

The roof of the car consists of a solar honeycomb-membrane panel which will collect the sun’s rays when parked and when moving and will transfer that energy to the main energy storage system located in the back of the vehicle.

The front hood of the car boasts three wind turbines. These will convert wind power into electric energy to be stored in the main battery. The remaining wind turbine is located on the trunk of the car and, according to EarthSure, will “grasp at the airflow that surrounds the car when driving”.

In fact, EarthSure envisions AirRay as eventually being able to produce excess energy and send this back into the power grid.

AirRay still a concept carHowever, the future isn’t quite here yet at EarthSure.

The initial AirRay™ concept car first incorporate the solar and wind-turbine features within a hybrid auto or traditional gas or diesel run vehicle.

According to EarthSure, the final version of the AirRay car is “a work in progress”.

“The AirRay car not only turns air and light into energy, but will turn a lot of heads too.”–EarthSure CEO Raymond Saluccio

The company offers no details on its web site about how many watts the solar panels will be, or how much energy they will produce.

Nor does it offer any information about how much energy the wind turbines will produce – or any answers to the obvious question most people would have: Won’t the turbines create at least a much energy drag as they produce?

But the company is clearly serious about the AirRay, having filed numerous patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“Our final automobile will be solely electric powered and not have any need for gas or oil,” notes EarthSure CEO Raymond Saluccio in a press release about AirRay on EarthSure’s web site. “The AirRay car not only turns air and light into energy, but will turn a lot of heads too.”

About The Author

Christof Demont-Heinrich is founder, creator and editor of SolarChargedDriving.Com, which he launched in September 2009. A journalism professor at the University of Denver (DU), Demont-Heinrich is a lifelong environmentalist who loves to bird, hike, camp, and bike. As passionate as he is about the environment -- and about promoting the synergy between solar power and electric cars, he is equally passionate about writing.